Knoxville’s Alternative Art Venues

Like most communities with a large population of artists and a major university, Knoxville has a thriving art scene hidden behind its mainstream galleries and museums. If you are interested in buying art, looking at art, or finding places to show your art off the main track, you have to find the heart of the arts community.

Scattered throughout the downtown area are four studios that also hang rotating exhibits in their galleries and host First Friday events. Preston Farabow is a custom metal worker with a degree in sculpture from the University of Tennessee. He and his business partner John McGilvray, a master woodworker, have just moved their Ironwood Studios and Gallery into a spacious, old industrial building on Jennings Avenue near the intersection of Broadway and Central. They have already filled the buildings’ enclosed showroom with Farabow’s witty metal work (where else can you get a metal coffee table with Astroturf?), McGilvray’s elegant custom furniture and door samples, and a large collection of bright, folk-style paintings by Ryan Blair. Farabow and McGilvray also plan to offer classes in blacksmithing, steel sculpture, and woodwork this fall.

Farabow holds the record for longest-running First Friday events in Knoxville. His monthly spectacles date back to the days at his original location under the downtown cloverleaf, and they still have no rivals. A typical celebration will feature Preston roasting an entire pig while creating a sculpture on-site and immediately auctioning it off. Friends and others from the arts community bring food, local bands play, and a rather bizarre parade of performers impresses visitors with everything from spoon bending to extreme circus stunts. (Ever see anyone hammer a four-inch nail into his head? Sideshow Bennie of Nashville is a frequent and hair-raising presence but is definitely not for the squeamish.) The promotion for these events is mostly done by word of mouth; if you are downtown for other First Friday events, it’s easy to ask someone, “Is Preston doing anything tonight?” Someone will know.

Fluorescent Gallery, located in David Wolff’s extra studio space on North Central, has been open for just over a year. Wolff primarily hangs the work of UT graduate students, faculty and recent graduates. The exhibits are held on sporadic Friday evenings and an occasional Saturday evening, usually starting early and lasting late into the night. Huge realist paintings, abstract work, prints, drawings, and occasionally complete gallery installations fill the space.

Just last month, recent UT graduate Michael Martin opened The Basement Gallery on West Jackson Avenue in the Old City. Martin found himself without enough space to work on his PVC pipe sculptures and paintings at home. His new work space is at the back of the gallery, where he’s content to work under artificial light.  He fills his front studio with an eclectic collection of work from artists based in New York, Washington, D.C., Virginia, Kentucky, and Chicago. The exhibits will change monthly and will increasingly include local artists. He presently has a call for submissions for Alterscapes, an open juried exhibit.

Host, just upstairs from the Basement Gallery, is still in its developmental stages. Created by Adam Deal, Meredith McGill, and Craig Kendall, the space will offer silk-screening, deviously original T-shirt designs, and vinyl records for sale, a rotating gallery and periodic community events. They’re planning a collaboration called “Destroy All Monsters with the Basement Gallery”; the project will include “costumed monster wrestling” and a staged sea battle with costumes and scenery designed and manufactured by participants.

Gallery 1010, on South Gay Street, is the official gallery for UT art majors. Michael Giles, a painting major in the graduate school, is directing the gallery this year. Although 1010 usually shuts down after the UT school year, Giles has, for the first time , kept the gallery open through the summer. Virtually every Friday throughout the school year, a juried exhibit is hung by groups of students of various disciplines and class levels as students, faculty, and visitors come and go. (The gallery is considered a student laboratory, so professors are available only for guidance if needed.)

Lastly, the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church on Kingston Pike has a long tradition of hosting high-caliber juried exhibits featuring regional artists. The church’s gallery space is a specially designed and lighted entrance to the sanctuary; exhibits rotate every two months with catered opening receptions and stimulating artist talks. It is not uncommon to find the work of area college art professors on view, along with work from some of the city’s more prominent artists. Submission proposals are welcome from artists every spring. The gallery is viewable when the church is open during business hours.